SCAN: News and resources for Southern California appellate lawyers, featuring the Second and Fourth District Courts of Appeal and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

Friday, October 23, 2015

Frivolous appeal = $9K in sanctions

Today's installment of "appellate sanctions" is brought to you by the First District, Div. 2, in a decision here that begins:

Appellant [] is described in respondent []’s brief as having been “a litigant in around 50 matters, mostly as plaintiff,”. . . “whose abnormal litigation pathology puts into context the questionable prosecution he maintained against [Respondent]”—a description [Appellant] does not dispute in his reply.

You can see where this is headed....

[O]n our own motion we assess sanctions in the amount of $9000 against [Appellant] and his counsel for pursuing an appeal that can only be described as frivolous.

The court supports that sum by noting:

[C]ourts have assessed sanctions on this basis in varying amounts. The following are illustrative:

Marriage of Economou (1990) 223 Cal.App.3d 97, 107–108 [sanction of $15,000 as “proper total cost to the state assignable to this case”].